The BAO is upon us, and with it comes camaraderie, cheesy lists, and more bottom table drinking games then I would care to admit in this article. Read on weary travelers, and find out what you would have encountered if you attended this year’s BAO.

The Winning Dark Angels list is below in red

A New Venue

The guys over at Game Kastle are helping us running it this year. They are providing the terrain, the tables, and the space. They did a great job choosing a large enough venue for the BAO and their help gives everyone over here at Frontline more time to make sure everything else about the event runs as smoothly as a model over one of our F.A.T. mats (shameless advertising? check)

Our Warhammer 40k Community

I may not always get along with everyone in our community 100% of the time, but I do love and appreciate every single person that makes the effort to come to events and share a mutual love for our game and hobby. It is a wonderful experience to see both spirited competitors, and talented hobbyists drinking together, laughing at dice rolls, and generally having a good time.

Speaking of Spirited Competitors….

With 2015 winner Alan Bajramovic and 2014 winner Steve Sisk nowhere in sight it is time for a new player to wear the coveted Belt of Russ. There are a lot of good players coming out but I am going to narrow it down to my three favorites to win the entire thing.

Julio is hungry for some BAO glory. He has quietly had one of his best ITC seasons yet. With a Best General win at the Broadside Bash and one of the best meta Eldar lists Julio is looking to break out with a dominant GT win. There are some rumors going on about Julio bringing a Blood Angels battle company list flying around, and if that’s the case Julio is the guy that can finally bring glory to the Space Vampires.

Round 1: W 11-2 against a battle company

Round 2: W 11-0 against Tau monster mash

Round 3: W 8-4 against Dark Angels Battle Company

Round 4: T 6-6 against Seer Council

Round 5: L 9-4 against 45 Warp Spiders

Round 6: L 11-2 against Tau

Matt Root knows his stuff. I thought maybe after hearing his story about how he got into the top 8 at Adepticon, his glory might be a fluke. He quickly silenced my doubts however with a dominant win at the Flying Monkey GT and is now sitting pretty at the top of the ITC rankings. Matt knows his stuff and as soon as I saw his name on the registration list I knew he would be a player to watch. Also, if you want to know what kind of list he will possibly bring here is a List-Tech article I did on his AdMech list.

Round 1: W 11-1 against Daemons

Round 2: W 11-1 against Space Marines

Round 3: W 11-1 against Battle Company

Round 4: W 9-2 against Tau (Mason was unable to play)

Round 5: W 11-1 against Eldar

Round 6: T 6-6 against 30 Warp Spiders Eldar

James and Frankie are the only players in the top 20 ITC rankings with only 4 games under their belt (Edit: Sorry Vincent Arroyo!) Of the players with 4 games, James is the highest sitting at 11th. James is on fire this season, he may only have 4 games but almost all of them are dominant wins among quality competition and he is practicing non-stop against some really solid competition (and me…). His Cyclopian Cabal list is terrifying, and he is poised to have a great 2016 ITC season.

Round 1: W 11-1 against Tau

Round 2: W 7-3 against Battle Company

Round 3: W 10-0 against Space Wolves

Round 4: W 11-0 against Bike Scars

Round 5: L 6-5 against Dark Angels (The BAO champ)

Round 6: W 11-0 against Chaos Daemons

Results: Well, two of the players finished in the top 8 and one player looked primed to accompany them if not for a poorly timed tie, and losses to two great players. Maybe next year I will be able to predict the winner!

Bay Area Open Army Breakdown

Dark Eldar: 6

Astra Militarum: 9

Skitarii: 5

Eldar: 19

Tyranids: 8

Space Wolves: 9

Khorne Daemonkin: 5

Space Marines: 32

Blood Angels: 4

Tau Empire: 13

Dark Angels: 9

Imperial Knights: 9

Cult Mechanicus: 8

Necrons: 8

Orks: 6

Harlequins: 4

Chaos Daemons: 10

Eldar Corsairs: 1

Militarum Tempestus: 1

Grey Knights: 2

Chaos Space Marines: 2

Renegades: 1

Officio Assassinorum: 1

So not bad! I understand there are 63 marine type armies on the board but hey, compared to some other tournaments the percentage of Eldar, Tau, and Daemons is actually quite low. Space Marines are the most popular army in 40k, period. If you break it down further I would imagine a full 3rd of the vanilla space marine armies are actual “white scars” battle companies. Also judging by the lack of deathstars in the top 16 I think it is safe to say that space marine deathstars are not as dominant as some people may have you believe.

Reece announcing the winners

BAO Results and Top List

Brandon Grant beats Matthew Schuchman and his Eldar Seer council to become the only player in the tournament to finish 6-0. Brandon’s Dark Angels (below) took care of business against 4 opponents with 5 wins, and 3 players who won their respective “best of faction” rewards. Brandon was matched against an insanely diverse and talented group of players (Daemons, Eldar, Orks, Ad Mech, GuardDar, and Imperial Knights). Not only that, but he did it with a list that is widely regarded as inferior to it’s big brother the White Scars battle company. Good Job Brandon, way to take the sacred belt of Russ away from those pesky space puppies. Azrael would be proud.

Another note, there were three undefeated players at the start of round 6. Brandon got paired down, and Matt Root and Andrew Ford played an intense game that saw both a knight, and wraithknight go down to not so accurate Eldar artillery. Their game ended in a draw which paved the way for Brandon to finish 6-0. You can find the rest of the top 8 on the bestcoast app but i’m going to go over them here as well.

The Top 8

1) Brandon Grant [6-0] (list below) Dark Angels Battle Company

2) Matt Root [5-0-1]
Melee oriented War Convocation

3) Michael Snider [5-0-1]
White Scars Battle Company

4) Andrew Ford [5-0-1]
30 Warp Spiders Eldar

5) Thomas Hegstrom Oakey [5-0-1]
White Scars Battle Company

6) Carlos Kaiser [5-1]
GuardDar with Inquisition

7) Geoff Robinson [5-1]
War Convocation with a Librarius Conclave

8) James Carmona [5-1]
Chaos Daemons Cabal Star/Mini Screamer Star

Here is your top 8, I will be posting up each list and a brief analysis up on the Frontlinegaming site periodically over the next few weeks. If there is any player in the 25 you would like to have me review please let me know in the comments down below!

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Nice to see a fluffy list win a tournament. Well played sir, well played.
On the flip side, 63 Loyalist Space Marine armies in assorted flavors, 5 Khorne flakes, and 2 CSM. Eldar are better represented then Guard, Orks, and Nids combined. Yuck.

ZeeLobby

Yeah, the tourney scene has gotten very repetitive. The power gap is just SO huge.

Anggul

It’s why I dislike the current obsession with formations. The intention is to encourage people to play fluffy armies, but in doing so it makes them all very similar with only a handful of differences between each. It’s also pretty silly that you need exactly X units to have a special rule, no more and no less.

ZeeLobby

True, and mechanically they would just work better if they ALL had a downside. Some have a unit tax of something that’s not all that great, but most just take already powerful units and make them better.

Shawn

I played against the Lion’s Blade recently along with the Ravenwing formation with the neat little speeder death star. Lo’ to my delight when he used interceptor on my stormtalon and not the stormraven when it came in. Next turn stormtalon hovers, dread drops out and assaults said speeders. What? No overwatch? Now whose a sad panda?

ZeeLobby

Haha. Nice! I mean there’s definitely times it works in your favor, but sometimes the deck just feels stacked :/.

Shawn

I hear you, and it’s stacked against you more often, than not. I was running a Fist of Medusa Strike Force. That 5+ FNP came in real handy that game,

ZeeLobby

And by fluffly do you just mean a single source? Or the formations/detachments outside CAD? It looks like obsec spam with bikes. I mean it does fit fluffily with DA, but it’s also one of the gotos for competitive SMs.

DA is def top tier now, but you’re still locked into certain units.

WellSpokenMan

I can easily imagine this army coming from one of the Dark Angels books. I know the Battle Company formation is stupid balance wise, but at least it’s fluffy. I prefer this list to the one that won Adepticon with 4 codices.

ZeeLobby

I’m right there with yah. Personally I’d prefer no formations and just a straight up CAD win. That would take some real skill to pull off now though, haha.

OldHat

Not really. Never forget that player skill beats lists at least better than half the time, if not more. Just because you can put a netlist on the table, doesn’t mean you know how to win with it. 😀

ZeeLobby

My point was that an equally skilled player limited to CAD playing into a meta dominated by detachments and formations would have no chance, while a skilled player could maybe pull off some wins. I mean that winning list has what, 400ish free points.

OldHat

“Free” is relative. He has to conform to restrictions that may not always be optimal to get them. And my point is that a skilled player running just a CAD could win in said environment – we won’t know, because no one would bother with such an arbitrary restriction, but it is entirely possible that they get good match-ups and outplay their opponent, just like in every other incarnation of the game thus far. Pairings, player skill, and luck account for a huge portion of the game. Way more than listbuilding, imo (based on all my personal experience in tourneys, at the least).

ZeeLobby

Er… I dunno. Listbuilding is where I see most events won. I mean the “cost” associated with that metric ton of free stuff is relatively low, as it’s all genuinely good ObjSec stuff, which is strong competitively in it’s own right. Once you reach a certain level, list tools clearly outweigh a player’s skill. That said I do agree that luck is a major factor. When the game revolves around buckets of d6 with rerolls, luck is huge. There is no curve average for results, and the ability for a good roll to remove entire units from the game makes it way more swingy than other systems.

Maybe it’s just hard to notice the list building because everyone just starts with the same lists, lol.

OldHat

It isn’t just dice that is a luck-based part of the game. Pairings are huge. You might go all day and never see your worst match-up… or, like I always seem to, only face your worst match-ups. 😀

And while yes, the Full Co for Marines gives freebies, it is restrictive while being somewhat fluffy. That is the happy medium I like in Formations. Free doesn’t always equate to good. They might be in a mission where all that ObjSec means jack. Again, loads of factors here – not even touching on player skill, either.

And on that, player skill is huge. I watched folks try to pilot netlists locally and wind up not getting the nuance and losing badly because of it. While on the other hand, I have seen 10+ year vets, who just “get it”, roll people with their fun lists.

Lots of factors beyond just having a good list.

ZeeLobby

Right, I guess I’m mixing up good list vs good faction. Right now it’s about picking a good faction, then playing it well.

An_Enemy

Please stop saying demi or Gladius is restricting. You can min/max it like anything else and marine players are already taking all the units involved except for, maybe, assault Marines(they get a bad rap, but they usually do exactly what I want them to)

You want restricting? Try being forced to take Hellions for your army’s only formation.

GAZNZ

As a DE player i agree lol

Petey Pab

Like in a lot of major tournaments for a variety of games it is a combination of luck, player skill, and list-building. I have been lucky enough to attend large major tournaments and I do notice a trend. I have seen tables where a more skilled player is playing someone with a cheesy net-list and I knew that player with the “inferior” list would win.

No matter the game competitive players will hone in on the winning strategies at the cost of fun. The same champions are always used in league of legends, the same 3-4 standard decks in MtG will always win, The NFL is a “Passing league”, etc. etc. That’s the nature of competition, and we as human beings gravitate away from the status quo when we become spectators and not participants. Why? Because we want to be entertained, not because the game is broken.

ZeeLobby

Yeah, I guess I just remember the olden days when you’d see a larger mix of factions. Some will say that the gap is as it always was, but I just don’t see how that’s true anymore. I used to place well with my not-nob-biker Ork lists in the past, but placing anywhere near the top is a pipe-dream at this point.

Petey Pab

I know quite a few Ork players who would adamantly disagree with you. One of them in fact would have been a favorite to win the tournament had his mother-in-law not died the night before.

If you want to see how untrue it is go to a lage tournament and sit down and talk to every single player in the top 16. Ask them why they chose their lists, ask them if they expect to win, ask them how many times they almost lost to a “bad list”. That Tyranid at 39th immediately lost his warlord to a perils on 3 dice, a failed grounding check, and just one squad of warp spiders who happened to be in the right spot. He was just a few bad dice rolls away from going 5-0. Which would have guarunteed him a spot in the top 16 and moved him to the top table. Could you imagine that? Tyranids at the top table in the final round of a 173 person 40k tournament competing for the championship. He lost because of luck, not because his list or codex was bad.

I really wish I could cover these events perfectly. There is so much competitive drama that just can’t be typed up fast enough by one guy who is also trying to judge, snap pictures, and get a meal in.

WellSpokenMan

It would be easier to see this if the same codices didn’t show up over and over again. Results at LVO, Adepticon, and now BAO paint a picture of a very unbalanced game. It doesn’t mean that it takes any less skill to win the tournament, but as you said “players will hone in on the winning strategies.” For a while now, those strategies seem to have largely revolved around owning a large amount of Space Marines or Eldar.

ZeeLobby

Exactly. I’m sorry, but regardless of what he may “think”, the results just aren’t supporting his position.

Petey Pab

You don’t see the full results. Come talk to me at a large event before you waste more time arguing on a media platform not designed for debate.

ZeeLobby

Sounds like a plan. It’s pretty easy to find results online, and I just don’t see the data you are drawing your conclusions from.

Petey Pab

Focusing on codices highlights the exact problems I was talking about. There are strategies players hone in on in every single codex. Space Marines have a lot of other options no one EVER uses. The percentage of things available to space marines versus what you see on the tabletop is nearly equal to competitive builds from each codex.

ZeeLobby

Well. They can gnash their teeth all they want. Until an Ork player actually places well at an event, I’ll just consider it misplaced boasting, haha.

Who was the favorite (if you don’t mind telling me). Wouldn’t mind looking them up to see their record. I find it hard to believe that anyone would even contemplate Orks winning BAO.

And while the Tyranid player lost due to the luck of that one roll, it’s the lack of forgiveness inherent to Tyranids that make the loss sting that much more. I’ve seen librarians peril out early in a game, and it has little effect on the game outcome if the player as good. Tyranids… not so much. The point still stands that there is a TON of evidence that these armies are not placing well, while we repeatedly see Eldar, Daemons and SMs place high, while other armies continue to slosh around the bottom of the barrel. One close call doesn’t change that.

That said, tournaments can be very fun, as long as your willing to buy the current power. Having attended multiple events with pure DE, it can be very disheartening to be on the receiving end, like when wave serpent spam negated the good cover saves of your entire army.

Skathrex

But that has nothing to do with the System you are playing (although 40k has a balance issue).
Thats a trend the internet started. More Information is shared and more players know whats “good” and thus a Meta starts to build = smaler mix of factions/ Builds.
MTG is the perfect example. There is soo much information available that there is prettey much always a “Deck to beat”, for the spectators the most interesting tournaments to watch are the ones after rotations, where a new Meta chapes.
The Problem in 40k is, the players cling a lot more to 1 army than a MTG Player does to a Color. (for obvious reasons)

Red_Five_Standing_By

You could build a Space Marine Company in CAD.

Or you could do the same thing with formations and get free transports.

There’s no doubt which one people would go for.

ZeeLobby

Haha, no doubt at all. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had those options :D.

Meister_Haufen

That’s no fluffy list. It’s Min/Max to get as much free stuff as possible. Fluffy would be 10 marine squads but than u wouldn’t get the rhinos and razerbacks for free.

Defenestratus

Regardless of whether or not its fluffy, its far less offensive than what is possible out there.

ZeeLobby

Which is what formations should have done. Problem is there’s a fair amount of spam supporting formations which are also strong.

ZeeLobby

Yeah… turns out free stuff is good :D.

WellSpokenMan

I see what your saying, and most of the top 8 were pretty fluffy. Still, I’ve seen much worse (see Adepticon 2016).

georgelabour

A few dozen tactical marines led by their captain with a chaplain plus support from the 6th, 9th, 10th, and 1st companies to round out their tactical capacity…

Yeah we’ve definitely not had dozens of Marine stories comprising just such forces in alll the history of 40k lore.

We definitely do not have an entire trilogy of Salamanders novels featuring a similar composition…

And that whole Codex Astartes organization wherein just such a force is organized? Why, that’s just fanon that GW has never once written about in a White Dwarf, Hard Cover book release, or RPG line…

Morgan Peck

I’d agree with you if the squads were full strength, but they’re not. Every one is minimum. I mean the devastators appear to only have a single heavy weapon apiece.

georgelabour

Operating under strength squads, splitting them into sub units, and or reforming them to insure optimal flexibility is also not unknown in the lore.

Heck the entire night lords trilogy features more than a few squads that range in size from two to six people.

Brothers of the Snake does something similar with combat units operating with as few as one Astartes.

Then there’s the matter of the base size being a well established doctrine, and the Astartes practice of combat teams.

Taking all of that into consideration it’s not hard to envision an understrength company reorganizing itself in this manner . Especially considering how thinly stretched most chapters seem to be.

Evil_Adam

I’d have to double check my Dark Angels codex… but I’m pretty sure you don’t get free transports from the Lion’s Blade…. I think you just get to Overwatch at BS3 or Possibly full BS.

Morgan Peck

No, they are like Gladius. Two Demi-Companies give full BS overwatch, and free transports.

That’s a pretty diverse list for the top 8, so it must be a lie. Craftworld Eldar were supposed to be unbeatable and win every tournament… BoLS comments said so.

Randy Randalman

Right? They also keep claiming Tau is broken, yet here we are again with a no-Tau top 8.

ZeeLobby

Tau have been bottom barrel for a while. You must not frequent competitive events. Eldar, SM (and some sub-marines) and Daemon/Daemonkin are the current OPness. Last major competitive event I went to had only two Tau players, and they wound up at the bottom.

EnTyme

That depends on whether or not the tournament uses ITC. Without the ITC nerfs, the Tau are still easily a top-5 army.

ZeeLobby

True, most of these events use the ITC.

ZeeLobby

Dark Angels are pretty common. Obsec spam also never really went away as being good, the internet just moved on.

WellSpokenMan

3 Battle companies, 2 Ad-mechs, 2 Eldar, and some Chaos Demons isn’t particularly diverse. The only surprise on that list is the Guard which were attached to Eldar, so…

ZeeLobby

LoL. Those combos are the worst. Like seer council with screamer star I saw last event…

OldHat

The thing that blew my mind was “melee” War Convo. Like many things you see on the internet, it had me confused, but …intrigued.

Countdiscount

I’m not seeing 2 of the same thing here at all. Even among the duplicate general codexs used, every army up there seems to have a different take on how to play that army unless you’re counting Dark Angles and White Scars Battle companies as similar.

WellSpokenMan

White Scars and Dark Angels Battle Companies are similar. I don’t play in tournaments, but if you’d asked me what factions would be represented in the top tier, only Guard would have surprised me (and even that is only due to a heretical alliance with Eldar). 40k isn’t broken because only one faction can win, it’s broken because entire factions have almost no chance to win. Those factions don’t even go to the tournaments anymore. There were two players playing non-Khorn CSM. Two. There were 6 each Orks and Dark Eldar, in the entire tournament, as opposed to over 60 power armor wearing loyalists.
So yeah, if you count Ad-Mech replacing Necrons at the big kids table and Space Marines edging out Eldar for the top spot as big changes, then yes, there was quite a shakeup here.

Countdiscount

I’m not claiming that this is a breath of fresh air, more that there’s a lot of hyperbole about how such and such army will dominate everyone.

You’re totally right in that certain armies don’t have much of a chance right now.

Orblivion

You’re not very up to date are you?

Countdiscount

D1ck comments aside, do you have anything to add to discussion?

Orblivion

As if your comment wasn’t just flamebait?

ZeeLobby

No, he was just looking to flame.

Countdiscount

Right, because pointing out all the doomsday “Eldar will wipe the floor with everyone” hyperbole was wrong is flaming. I read that crap for months in every tournament thread.

If you can’t take someone remembering and pointing out you were wrong, you need to grow up.

Orblivion

I never said that what you did was flaming, I said it was flamebait.

You read that crap for months, so you were so sick of hearing about it that you decided to bring up the topic again yourself?

Countdiscount

I’m bringing up the topic that all the doomsday predictions were wrong in an effort to get you all to look at the results… realize you were wrong… and not do it again.

Would you prefer we all just forget all the months of wild speculation, whining, and complaining about the complete and utter Eldar domination, that never came to pass, just so you don’t need to admit your own contributions too it? Let that pattern repeat itself with the next competitive Codex that comes out?

No thanks. Learn from this

Orblivion

I never once complained on here about Eldar domination, check my history if you’d like. The pattern will repeat itself no matter what you do for the rest of your life, if anything all you’ve done is contributed to it.

Countdiscount

It was just a guess since I don’t know what your problem is and why you’re being so combative and d1ckish.

But thanks for the congrats. I’ll continue to call out all the doomsday post as I like.

HERE! I’m a Dark Eldar player. They have been on the shelf for a year though. Going 0-5 is never exciting, especially with a faction that I used to pull at least a 50% win ratio with at high end events.

Drew_Da_Destroya

Yeah, mine have mostly been sitting in my closet for a while now. I don’t play tournaments, but I play with some friends (Eldar, Necron, and Tau, usually), and getting wiped off the board by turn 2 just wasn’t fun.

I had some more luck running primarily Harlies, but even that’s pretty rough. Luckily my other army is the Orks, and their book is super… also garbage right now.

🙁

ZeeLobby

Haha, I used to have Orks, I sold them to a friend, who then moved on to other games. haha. I warned him.

Drew_Da_Destroya

Poor Orks. We used to be so cool. At least they’re still fun to build, though.

ZeeLobby

Yeah, I love the Ork boyz. Some people say they’re getting old, but I love positioning them with crazy arms

Drew_Da_Destroya

And they’re so easy to customize, too! Honestly, that’s one kit I don’t think needs to be redone. The Nobz box is also pretty sweet.

Sentikan

Could you give some indication on the list that the blood angels player was using please? I am trying to see a way to make them competative and some insight into these top player’s lists will help greatly, thanks a lot 🙂

Emdee

Its the punch that you don’t see that knocks you out. Great job with a regular army and excellent generalship.

GAZNZ

Well done
Is how the game should be played and what it is all about

petrow84

Agreed. As a DA/RW player, agreed even more.
Just don’t read all the free-transport-minmax-hurr-durr comments above.

The only cheesy-like thing is the 2+ re-roll cover save bikers, but at a tourney like that I presume there were quite a few things that could ignore that.

An_Enemy

Sorry, but free transports, full BS overwatch, rerollable jinks, models that make it impossible to shoot models behind them…

Not saying DA are game breaking, but if you can read the abilities above and say that’s how 40k should be played then…ahem. yeah.

GAZNZ

It has alot of weak points that are exploitable
Its not that OP
Get some tough guys into HTH and ya cannot jink that
Quite easy to do
Comes down to strategy
Its good to see 1 codex only being used

As a note i prefer straight codex non formation rules myself in games but formations seem to be all the rage
Id rather buy what i want than be told i have to get this unit to get so and so bonus
Not how i play
Each to there own 😉

An_Enemy

“Not saying DA are game breaking, but if you can read the abilities above and say that’s how 40k should be played then…ahem.”

This was my only point and I even lead off with an upfront admission that DA were not game breaking…so your response was to tell me that DA aren’t unbeatable or game breaking?